Leap year paper calls Truss ‘the most forgettable PM’

LIZ TRUSS is the most “forgettable” British prime minister and the Olympic Games should have a Winston Churchill wooden spoon award, according to the world’s only leap year newspaper.

Published in France only on Feb 29, La Bougie du Sapeur is thus only available once every four years. This is the 12th issue of the 20-page tongue-incheek paper since its launch in 1980.

Conceived by a group of friends who “wanted to have a laugh”, La Bougie du Sapeur (The Sapper’s Candle) has a print run of 200,000 copies.

This edition’s headline, “We will all be intelligent”, leads to an article on how AI is doing away with the need for exams and intellectual attainment.

The second lead story – entitled “What men need to know before becoming women” – explains what it describes as “challenges” that face men wanting to transition.

Jean d’indy, its editor, whose main job is running the French equivalent of the Jockey Club, told the BBC: “It is French humour, and it does not translate into other languages. We try to be silly but not nasty. To poke fun without being cruel.”

While keeping the attributes of a serious paper, with different sections on politics, sport and puzzles, the politically incorrect quadrennial is primarily for laughs. The international pages include a short piece that declares Liz Truss the most “forgettable” of modern British prime ministers.

The sports section calls for the creation of a Winston Churchill award for the first person eliminated from the Olympics. They say this is because Churchill’s motto was “No Sport”.

La Bougie du Sapeur is named after one of France’s earliest cartoon figures, Le Sapeur Camembert – a soldier simpleton in tales about life in the army in the 1890s. The paper can be bought only at newsagents and newspaper kiosks. It is priced at €4.90 (£4.20) and does a roaring trade. But Mr Indy has no intention of upping the frequency.

He said: “After the first issue sold out in two days, the newsagents were clamouring for more copies – so we said fine, but only in four years’ time!”